The End Draws Nigh

[Randy Carson]

The Evolution Of Conference Power In March Madness

"On Selection Sunday 2025, the SEC made history, securing an NCAA record 14 tournament selections to the March Madness field. No conference has ever achieved such a feat. The previous record belonged to the Big East in 2011, when 11 teams from the conference earned a spot in the tournament. This milestone is more than just a statistical anomaly; it is the latest sign of a fundamental shift in the balance of power within the sport." - Forbes, March 18, 2024

They have more money. They buy better coaches and players. They win more games and more championships.

Meanwhile, Tech loses in the first round of the NIT, and two of the ACC's four(?!?) invites to the big dance are gone on day one (so far). We're not even a good basketball conference at this point.

This is sad. I don't watch any more.

 

[dtm1997]

I don't watch any more.

Cool.

 

[ESPNjacket]

You might choose better things to read than Forbes while you don't watch.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

Not sure why people are dismissive of your topic. It will be challenging to change the narrative once selection committees see SEC teams as automatic invites. And that creates a feedback loop, as you point out that attracts more talented athletes and coaches.

But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the dismissive responses are because they know billionaires are in charge and we are pawns in their game only if don’t know the system is rigged.

 

[AUFC]

Not sure why people are dismissive of your topic. It will be challenging to change the narrative once selection committees see SEC teams as automatic invites. And that creates a feedback loop, as you point out that attracts more talented athletes and coaches.

But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the dismissive responses are because they know billionaires are in charge and we are pawns in their game only if don’t know the system is rigged.

It's the hypocrisy that bothers most of us I would imagine. "I don't watch any more", Randy posts on the forum devoted to college basketball / college athletics. If you actually do care about college athletics (and if you're here, you do - stop lying), stop sitting on your *** and go save the thing you care about by supporting your university rather than posting this "woe is me" nonsense. If you're in Atlanta, go buy tickets and support the team (you might even have fun and get the heart rate pumping doing it!). And if you're in North Carolina and can't travel for games, that is understandable - donate what you can to support the team/program.

Saving college athletics and Georgia Tech is in our realm of control and you don't get a say in this unless you're trying.

 

[reckrider]

It's the hypocrisy that bothers most of us I would imagine. "I don't watch any more", Randy posts on the forum devoted to college basketball / college athletics. If you actually do care about college athletics (and if you're here, you do - stop lying), stop sitting on your *** and go save the thing you care about by supporting your university rather than posting this "woe is me" nonsense. If you're in Atlanta, go buy tickets and support the team (you might even have fun and get the heart rate pumping doing it!). And if you're in North Carolina and can't travel for games, that is understandable - donate what you can to support the team/program.

Saving college athletics and Georgia Tech is in our realm of control and you don't get a say in this unless you're trying.

I’ve decided to support women’s basketball. It’s a purer game and just as enjoyable.

 

[4shotB]

I’ve decided to support women’s basketball. It’s a purer game and just as enjoyable.

How I love to believe in the gentle ways and the noble qualities of the fairer sex...however, there is something inside me that says if the game is purer, it's simply bc the money hasn't shown up yet in the same quantities yet. When it does, I think all bets are off. Of course, I may be wrong (and hope that I am!).

 

[lauraee]

How I love to believe in the gentle ways and the noble qualities of the fairer sex...however, there is something inside me that says if the game is purer, it's simply bc the money hasn't shown up yet in the same quantities yet. When it does, I think all bets are off. Of course, I may be wrong (and hope that I am!).

Greed or money does have a way of ruining things. Sports, relationships, government, societal structures, environment, economy- remember the 2008 real estate crash & recession, people's health ( opioid crisis).

 

[SecretAgentBuzz]

As usual, the narratives are overblown. They make great articles, but they take a kernel of truth and make it the whole story.
SEC teams played really well and are certainly improved on the whole, but they received 38 bids mostly on the strength of their November wins. Yes, November wins count too, but the reality is that the SEC got teams in the dance that shouldn’t be there.
Yes, the ACC is down this year, but not as much as is being reported. The biggest issue I see is not that NIL came along and the ACC couldn’t hang, but more that some generationally good coaches all decided to retire in the same era and most of their replacements have been a downgrade. I have no idea what happened to Clemson…they really crapped the bed, but they are a good team. Louisville got a horrible draw and lost to a really good Creighton team. We always want to, but you can’t extrapolate too much from those individual games.

TL, DR? It’s true that the SEC has improved and the ACC lost some ground, but it’s not as dramatic as the reports—these things are cyclical. Let’s wait and take a five-year average of team strength and bids and success.

 

[ESPNjacket]

As usual, the narratives are overblown. They make great articles, but they take a kernel of truth and make it the whole story.
SEC teams played really well and are certainly improved on the whole, but they received 38 bids mostly on the strength of their November wins. Yes, November wins count too, but the reality is that the SEC got teams in the dance that shouldn’t be there.
Yes, the ACC is down this year, but not as much as is being reported. The biggest issue I see is not that NIL came along and the ACC couldn’t hang, but more that some generationally good coaches all decided to retire in the same era and most of their replacements have been a downgrade. I have no idea what happened to Clemson…they really crapped the bed, but they are a good team. Louisville got a horrible draw and lost to a really good Creighton team. We always want to, but you can’t extrapolate too much from those individual games.

TL, DR? It’s true that the SEC has improved and the ACC lost some ground, but it’s not as dramatic as the reports—these things are cyclical. Let’s wait and take a five-year average of team strength and bids and success.

Yes.

I've said this a couple of times this season but I don't think anyone read it. Anyone who works in college basketball was telling you before this season started that the SEC was going to be as strong top to bottom as any conference has ever been. They had an abnormal number of teams return a core of experienced players, added more experienced players in the portal, and have good coaches.

Trying to extrapolate that into some future state is more than a stretch. It is a guess based on little.

As has been mentioned on here by dozens of posters, the ACC has had a tremendous amount of coaching turnover, much driven by old Hall of Fame coaches not wanting to adjust to the new paradigm. Most of the replacement coaches have been downgrades, not surprisingly. These things will work themselves out.

Fan enthusiasm is important. ACC basketball had a smug enthusiasm for years that has been replaced by a simmering cynicism. It is bad for the league.

 

[stinger78]

Greed or money does have a way of ruining things. Sports, relationships, government, societal structures, environment, economy- remember the 2008 real estate crash & recession, people's health ( opioid crisis).

As I quoted elsewhere, it is said that “the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.”

 

[4shotB]

As I quoted elsewhere, it is said that “the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.”

I tried to love money myself, but apparently it didn"t love me back.

 

[gte447f]

Yes.

I've said this a couple of times this season but I don't think anyone read it. Anyone who works in college basketball was telling you before this season started that the SEC was going to be as strong top to bottom as any conference has ever been. They had an abnormal number of teams return a core of experienced players, added more experienced players in the portal, and have good coaches.

Trying to extrapolate that into some future state is more than a stretch. It is a guess based on little.

As has been mentioned on here by dozens of posters, the ACC has had a tremendous amount of coaching turnover, much driven by old Hall of Fame coaches not wanting to adjust to the new paradigm. Most of the replacement coaches have been downgrades, not surprisingly. These things will work themselves out.

Fan enthusiasm is important. ACC basketball had a smug enthusiasm for years that has been replaced by a simmering cynicism. It is bad for the league.

Fan enthusiasm is something the sec does better than any other conference. It won’t be good for the rest of us if their hoards finally start to take an interest in basketball.

 

[4shotB]

Fan enthusiasm is something the sec does better than any other conference. It won’t be good for the rest of us if their hoards finally start to take an interest in basketball.

there was an old gag long ago about them being mildly interested in bb but it was never going to surprass football recruiting season as their favorite winter sport.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

Yes.

I've said this a couple of times this season but I don't think anyone read it. Anyone who works in college basketball was telling you before this season started that the SEC was going to be as strong top to bottom as any conference has ever been. They had an abnormal number of teams return a core of experienced players, added more experienced players in the portal, and have good coaches.

Trying to extrapolate that into some future state is more than a stretch. It is a guess based on little.

As has been mentioned on here by dozens of posters, the ACC has had a tremendous amount of coaching turnover, much driven by old Hall of Fame coaches not wanting to adjust to the new paradigm. Most of the replacement coaches have been downgrades, not surprisingly. These things will work themselves out.

Fan enthusiasm is important. ACC basketball had a smug enthusiasm for years that has been replaced by a simmering cynicism. It is bad for the league.

You are probably right. At least I hope so.

I think the concern is this. The SEC at one time was not a dominant football conference, good, but not dominant. It only took a couple of strong years for them to capitalize on a genius, and relentless, marketing scheme for them to turn this into a major recruiting advantage and give them major advantages in marketing and sales. The SEC will squeeze every last ounce of juice out of this season while a usual passive ACC may end up wondering why their status keeps dropping. The complacency of the ACC is a major concern. If you wanted to play elite basketball you used to have to go to the ACC. Taking that for granted and not solidifying that marketing advantage may end up being a major mistake.

 

[stinger78]

Yes.

I've said this a couple of times this season but I don't think anyone read it. Anyone who works in college basketball was telling you before this season started that the SEC was going to be as strong top to bottom as any conference has ever been. They had an abnormal number of teams return a core of experienced players, added more experienced players in the portal, and have good coaches.

Trying to extrapolate that into some future state is more than a stretch. It is a guess based on little.

As has been mentioned on here by dozens of posters, the ACC has had a tremendous amount of coaching turnover, much driven by old Hall of Fame coaches not wanting to adjust to the new paradigm. Most of the replacement coaches have been downgrades, not surprisingly. These things will work themselves out.

Fan enthusiasm is important. ACC basketball had a smug enthusiasm for years that has been replaced by a simmering cynicism. It is bad for the league.

So, legacy ACC coaches who retired in the past 5 years:
Roy Williams
Mike Krzec#%^*
Jim Boeheim
Tony Bennett
Jim Larranaga
Leonard Hamilton
Chris Mack

Others?

 

[stinger78]

I tried to love money myself, but apparently it didn"t love me back.

Notice it doesn’t say possession. The only thing worse than loving what you have is loving what you don’t have.

 

[Peacone36]

So, legacy ACC coaches who retired in the past 5 years:
Roy Williams
Mike Krzec#%^*
Jim Boeheim
Tony Bennett
Jim Larranaga
Leonard Hamilton
Chris Mack

Others?

Chris Mack did not retire. He's the coach at College of Charleston.

 

[Randy Carson]

It's the hypocrisy that bothers most of us I would imagine. "I don't watch any more", Randy posts on the forum devoted to college basketball / college athletics. If you actually do care about college athletics (and if you're here, you do - stop lying), stop sitting on your *** and go save the thing you care about by supporting your university rather than posting this "woe is me" nonsense. If you're in Atlanta, go buy tickets and support the team (you might even have fun and get the heart rate pumping doing it!). And if you're in North Carolina and can't travel for games, that is understandable - donate what you can to support the team/program.

Saving college athletics and Georgia Tech is in our realm of control and you don't get a say in this unless you're trying.

First, check the football/basketball ratio of my posts. I don't venture over here often.

Second, I grew up in NC (a few miles from the Greensboro Coliseum) watching the ACC tournament on Fridays at school when our teachers rolled to Audio/Visual carts into the classrooms so THEY could watch the games. We had to get the rabbit ears just right in order to "sail with the pilot." I remember when most offices and even whole companies closed on the Friday of the tournament like any other national holiday. I remember moving to Maryland and asking my boss what time we got off on Friday, and he asked, "Why?" In those days, you won the Conference or you went home. Now, we can't even make a 68-team invitation list.

I remember Lefty, Terry Holland, and Dean Smith. I remember Monty Towe and David Burleson, Phil Ford, Len Bias, and Ralph Sampson. THE SHOT against Kentucky. I tutored Anthony Byrd, Mark Price and John Salley my senior year. I still have the hand-written note from Coach Cremins which included two tickets to the tournament which was in The Omni that year. I couldn't find anyone interested enough to go with me, so I sat in the nosebleed section by myself just happy to be in the building.

I've gone on too long, so I'll close with this: the demise of the ACC as a whole is all about the dollars. We can (and do) argue about decisions made by past commissioners, but at the end of the day, the schools selling the most football tickets are now ruling the roost. I'm not happy with Maryland leaving or with Clemson and FSU suing to leave - but can you really blame them? Look at the low-budget hires we've made: Gregory. Pastner. And now Stoudamire (#61 in salary ranking nationwide). You get what you pay for.

Of course, your call for financial support is spot on; however, my post was more about the ACC as a whole than about Tech specifically.

The rise of the SEC in basketball can be tied to Sankey (on the advice of a consultant from what I understand) lighting a fire under the SEC AD's to improve their basketball programs, and now the result of that is obvious.

Our best hope is that Tech will get an invite to the B1G on the strengths of our television market and our resurgent football program. Barring that, we'll be stuck in the ACC playing Big 12 schools for a second-tier championship.

 

[Randy Carson]

nm